USA Today details Guitar Hero 5 @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on May 15, 2009

News: New modes, new tracks and Sympathy for the Devil.

USA Today's Game Hunters blog has the scoop on the next iteration of the Guitar Hero series, currently known as Guitar Hero 5.

The game will be released this Fall on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. It will also include a variety of new features including the ability for all four players to play the notes for the same instrument. So, for example, if four people want to be the drummer, now they each can be.

Other new modes include the Fest competitive multiplayer mode and the cooperative Party Play Mode. In Fest mode, four players locally (or up to eight online) will compete for the highest score. And high scores will be affected by momentum and stringing together consecutive notes. According to the article, "As the song plays, when a player misses a note, they lose momentum points and must hit 20 straight notes to regain the momentum." Party Play Mode is just what it sounds like, a group session where instruments and difficulty can be changed on-the-fly, even during the song.

The article also revealed a ton of tracks that will appear in the game. According to Activision, 25% of the songs will come from albums released in the last year and a half and more than half will have been released in the last ten years, but most of the tracks revealed in the article aren't quite that new:

Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire
Bob Dylan - All Along The Watchtower
Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
Tom Petty - Runnin' Down a Dream
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
Santana - No One To Depend On
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid
Stevie Wonder - Superstition

It looks like Activision decided to raid my MP3 collection for the next Guitar Hero. The game will also include an unnamed Iron Maiden song as well as "more classic rock or heavy metal."

We'll have more soon.